It was full-on dark now, a three-quarters moon low on the horizon. She’d passed only a couple of kids trick-or-treating, since it was getting late. She saw some teenagers laughing, shoving one another, talking on their cell phones, a couple of them wearing mom’s sheets around their necks. Bedroom superheroes? She wondered what this teenage pod would do if no one answered the front door. Was toilet paper draped in trees still the big thing?
She pulled on her mask as she walked into the inn, tugged her French braid out over the elastic, and strolled into the large ballroom. It was decorated to the hilt with skeletons dancing on the walls, and loop after loop of black and orange crepe paper was strung from the ceiling. The huge room was filling up fast, the noise level rising. A band played an enthusiastic rumba in the corner, and she saw three costumed couples performing quite well. There was a large rectangular table at the other end of the room with a huge punch bowl and plates of fresh veggies and dip, untouched, and a score of different kinds of pies, all nearly gone. There were several dozen circular tables, each with ten chairs, most of them filled with costumed locals. A small grinning pumpkin with a lit candle inside sat on each table. More people arrived behind her, sending the noise level even higher.
Nearly everyone wore masks, and many were decked out in elaborate costumes, like Captain Hook or Bluebeard, she didn’t know which, several Musketeers laughing at their own jokes, and a Captain Kirk doing the rumba with Lieutenant Uhura in her twenty-third-century miniskirt.
And there he was, Chief of Police Matthew Wilde, standing by the large food table chatting with two couples drinking orange Halloween punch from clear plastic cups. She watched Captain Picard dump the contents of a flask into the punch, probably vodka, and wondered how many other partiers had done the same thing and would continue to. She remembered her dad used to carry a flask to this shindig every year, her mom laughing and shaking her head at him. He never said a word about the small vodka bottle in her purse.
She paused a moment and studied the police chief. In the photos she’d seen of him as a detective in Philadelphia only months before he’d quit the force, he’d looked dour and stiff-lipped, showing about as much life as a stick of wood. But tonight, he was smiling and looked relaxed, his once military-short hair now on the long side. He wasn’t wearing a mask or a costume, but sharp-looking civilian black wool slacks, a white shirt that was open at the neck, black boots, and a black leather jacket, what she thought of as the Savich School of Fashion. His eyes were a mix of green and blue, heavily lashed. He looked rangy, lean like a runner. She knew he was three years older than she was, divorced, no children, and she wondered what had happened to break up the marriage. In the photos she’d seen, he’d been clean-shaven. No longer. Now he sported dark beard scruff, a look she normally didn’t like, but on him, it fit. He looked a little tough, maybe a little mean, but overall, he projected calm and trustworthiness. I know what I’m doing and I’ll keep you safe. Was he what he advertised? In her first six months as an FBI special agent, she’d met two police chiefs she’d wanted to punch out for how they’d treated her, a woman FBI agent.
Pippa looked away from him, over the fast-filling ballroom. Probably at least one hundred and fifty people were here. What with the masks and costumes, she hadn’t recognized anyone, but that also meant no one would recognize her.
Time to meet Wilde. She made her way to the food table and poured only half a plastic cup of the spiked Halloween punch to go with the oatmeal cookie she gingerly slipped out from her pocket beneath her red velvet cloak. She sipped her punch, chewed her cookie, and watched him. He was only six feet away. Soon he would see her and come say hello, realize he didn’t know her, and introduce himself.
Sure enough, here he came. “I’d recognize that smell anywhere—it’s one of Mrs. Trumbo’s famous oatmeal cookies.”
He had a deep voice, and a smooth cadence, an accent more mid-Atlantic than Southern.
She broke off a piece from the pumpkin oatmeal cookie, handed